Someday In Paris
by Fair Lorelei
Summary: As senior year approaches, Helga wants nothing more than to just forget about Arnold entirely, but somehow life keeps slamming them back together. Is it fate or just miserable coincidence? A story about love, loss, unexpected journeys and growing up . . . (rated for language, themes & general inappropriateness...haha)
1. Chapter 1

Helga watched the little drops of blood fall from her finger and slide down the side of the sink, fanning out in pale pink rivulets as they mixed with the water clinging to the sides of the basin. She grabbed some random bandaids from the medicine cabinet and carefully bandaged up the cut that stretched across half of her hand. It wasn't deep, but writing and eating and pretty much anything that required any sort of manual dexterity whatsoever was going to be a bitch for the next week.

_Way to go, genius. Yet another brilliant decision._

Maybe smashing a porcelain picture frame against the wall hadn't been one of her best ideas after all—but somehow in the moment, hurling the frame that contained that idiotic picture of Miriam holding her as a blissfully ignorant little three-year-old against hard sheetrock felt like she was breaking apart all remaining delusions that her childhood had been anything but the absolute nightmare she knew it to be.

On any other day she would have just avoided her mother like she usually did, but that morning it'd finally sunk in that in four short days she'd be back at PS 146, and she thought for one brief moment that maybe she could actually talk to Miriam about the rising panic that was starting to overtake her like it did at the start of every new school year.

_Mom, I'm really anxious about school, and I just—_

_What? Oh, hi Helga. Here, have some of this. You'll feel better._

Helga replayed the scene over in her mind: Miriam in her bathrobe, sliding her half-drained glass of whatever the hell she was drinking across the table without even looking up. Just thinking about it made her so angry again that she slammed the medicine cabinet shut, nearly shattering the mirror. She wondered if she broke it, if the old superstition might work in reverse. _Maybe for seven years my life would stop being such a miserable joke._ She shook her head at her reflection in the bathroom mirror; she'd only been awake for a few hours and she already looked completely worn out.

She shuffled back to her room and sat on the bed, feeling completely numb and completely furious all at once. She needed to get out of the house, now. But of course even that couldn't be simple.

Helga quickly brushed a stray tear from her cheek and forced herself to channel whatever it was that she was feeling into frustration over the fact that, as she'd discovered when she'd attempted to get dressed before her heartwarming little mother-daughter exchange over the cocktail of the day, she had almost nothing in her closet and no idea where any of her clothes were.

_Pants . . . pants . . ._

She scanned the room and then opened and closed the closet door again, as if it would magically turn into some kind of Narnia wonderland of fashion if she just wished hard enough.

_Where the heck are my pants? I need to get out of this hellhole and I can't do that if I don't have any stinkin' PANTS!_

She yanked out one of her dresser drawers and threw it on the floor in frustration. Mismatched socks tumbled out across the carpet, and she kicked them out of her way as she gave up on her room and trudged downstairs to check the laundry room.

"Mom!" Helga called out, more out of habit than of the expectation that she'd actually get an answer. Unopened mail, old towels and random papers cluttered the top of the laundry machine, but there were no clothes in sight.

"_Miriam!_" She hastily lifted up the lid of the washer to check inside, sending a stack of Pottery Barn catalogs sailing to the floor. _Where the heck are all my clothes? _Helga slammed the washer shut, toppling a stack of bills. She kicked those too. And then she kicked the washer. Twice.

Miriam had a habit of gathering up the family laundry and then getting distracted before she ever got around to actually washing anything, which usually meant she also deposited the as-yet unlaundered clothes in some completely inexplicable place like the bathroom closet, behind the sofa or, once, in the trunk of her station wagon. Helga was used to this phenomenon, much like she was used to coming home and finding her mother passed out on the couch while the smoke alarm blared and the charred remains of a chocolate cake sent clouds of gray smoke streaming out of the oven, but usually she just left for Phoebe's or the park or pretty much anywhere that wasn't her house when her mom was like this. It wasn't a great solution, but it worked well enough. Now, however, her own pantslessness was keeping her prisoner in her own personal hell and she quickly felt the panic that had already started to bubble up the minute she'd opened her eyes that morning threatening to turn into a full-blown attack on her sanity.

Helga dragged herself back upstairs and forced herself to knock on her mother's door. No answer. She considered putting her fist through it, but decided her hands had suffered enough abuse for one morning. She opened the door and there was Miriam, sprawled across the bed and out like a light. Some movie with Burt Reynolds was on mute on the flat-screen. Helga rolled her eyes, grabbed two empty glasses from the nightstand and headed back downstairs. After she deposited the glasses in the kitchen sink, she surveyed herself in the hall mirror. Skinny, pale, almost but not quite filling out her white ribbed pajama top, still looking exhausted—but all things considered, not too bad. She was silently grateful that she'd at least managed to escape the body obsession that seemed to plague almost every other girl in her school. It was like she had so many other things to feel bad about that there just wasn't room for her to worry about whether she was too skinny or not skinny enough, or whether her skin was as radiant as a dewy spring morning at all times.

She gave her reflection something that almost resembled a smile. For the briefest of moments she wondered if her pink lace underwear could pass for bathing suit bottoms, but she quickly decided even she wasn't _that_ desperate to get outside. No, it was time to do the unthinkable.

Five minutes later, Helga grabbed a soda from the fridge, swung her bag over her shoulder and headed out the door in the lacy white sundress and obnoxiously cheerful blue cardigan she'd found hanging in her sister Olga's old closet.

Although is was already early September, a wave of sticky heat washed over Helga the moment she stepped outside. She didn't mind though; the moment her feet hit the sidewalk, she felt the weight of the morning's events starting to float away with the breeze.

Soon she found herself walking toward Hillwood City Park. Peace and quiet and a little green grass and open sky were exactly what she needed to forget all about another exciting day full of Miriam being so predictably indisposed.

"_Have some of this, you'll 'feel better?'" Well, I guess we know who isn't winning any mother of the year awards . . . Not like there was any danger of that happening to begin with._

Helga tried her best to shove down all thoughts of the morning. It was just going to be a nice, uneventful afternoon in the park with her Diet Coke and the last of her summer reading list. As she neared the park entrance, however, it was starting to look more crammed than serene; it seemed that with school just around the corner, everyone else in town had had the same idea. All around her, the park bustled with people trying to squeeze the last few remaining drops of magic out of summer before the days of exams and papers and being crammed in the same building with the same old people descended upon them once again—but crowd or not, Helga dreaded the start of school more than anyone and she was determined to distract herself from her inevitable doom for as long as possible. She made a beeline for a shaded patch of grass, set up her blanket and sat down, determined to clear her mind. She cracked open her drink and turned to the first page of her book.

_It was the best of times, it was the worst of times . . . yeah, you're telling me. _

Her thoughts wandered as her eyes skimmed the page.

_It was the best of times, it was . . ._ _I wonder who I'll have for English? _

_It was . . . I wonder if he'll be in my class? Ugh. Get ahold of yourself. It was the best of times . . . _

_Well, if he is in my class, I can just sit in the back. Or if he sits in the back, I can sit in the front. Which would be better, actually, because then I won't have to stare at the back of his stupid head. _

_It was the best of times . . . ARGH!_

After about fifteen minutes of rereading the first sentence, Helga slammed the book shut, flopped back into the grass and sighed heavily. Her best efforts to find "inner peace," as Miriam so annoyingly put it ever since she started up with all that yoga junk, weren't going as well as she'd planned. So far all she had to show for her efforts were three mosquito bites and a grass stain on Olga's otherwise pristine dress. Even lying in her favorite spot under the big weeping willow tree—far enough from the playground and the fields that it was relatively secluded even on a busy day—wasn't helping her relax. She balled up Olga's cardigan under her neck, stared up at the calm blue sky and tried once again to will herself into believing that things were going to change this year.

_There is no reason I have to be sucked back into the same miserable cloud of despair and unrequited longing that has darkened every other stinking school year since I can remember. _

_Just because I've been sucked back into the same miserable cloud of despair and unrequited longing every stinking school year since I can remember, there's no reason I have to be sucked back into that same miserable cloud of despair and longing this year._

_Just because every year I tell myself I won't get sucked back into the same miserable cloud of despair and longing and every stinking year it takes roughly point-two seconds to get sucked back into that miserable cloud doesn't mean that this year I'll . . . damn it._

The whole thing seemed completely unfair and irrational. After all, why should she be subjected to nine months of uncontrollable lust or love or like-like-induced misery when she'd gone the entire summer without even really thinking about Arnold? Well until now. But thinking about not thinking about him wasn't the same thing as just_ thinking_ about him was it? She banged her head against the ground, as if she could rattle her unwanted thoughts loose and they'd just tumble out onto the dirt. Off in the distance, she heard kids shouting out a very heated game of Simon Says.

_Simons says? Simon says, shut your traps! I'm trying to find inner peace over here! _

Helga absentmindedly ripped a fistful of grass out of the ground and tossed it into the breeze. She wished she could rip out everything she was feeling and just watch it all flutter away like the blades of grass.

At a certain point, she figured she'd just been wrapped up in Arnold for so long that it was like a switch had flipped permanently on and her brain didn't know how else to respond around him other than to turn all gooey and stupid. She had little hope that her usual strategy of simply trying to avoid him as much as possible would work any better this year than it had any other year—which is to say not at all—but it was all she could think of outside of transferring schools. Not that she hadn't given _that _ample consideration. Still, it _was_ senior year—the last hurrah, the final countdown. Soon enough, major life changes would be completely unavoidable, so maybe there was some hope after all.

Helga yawned and stretched her limbs out against the grass. The heat and the idea of moving far far away from Hillwood City next year and never having to think about Arnold or her lousy mother or Bob and his increasingly long and frequent "business trips" again finally lulled her mind into submission, and she gave up on thinking about not thinking about Arnold. She laid her book across her chest, closed her eyes and soaked up the sun's afternoon glow from behind her eyelids, letting it warm up her cheeks and dance across her nose. She inhaled deeply, breathing in the scent of grass and leaves, mingled with the faintest notes of sunscreen and cotton candy. A bird warbled erratically from some nearby branch, the steady rush of bicycle tires crunching across gravel came and went, and in the distance she could hear kids laughing and the faint jangling of the Jolly Olly truck. The familiar symphony of Hillwood City Park carried her away from all of her racing thoughts, and she started to believe that maybe this year things really _would_ be different. For one lovely moment she actually felt carefree and weightless—right up until a rogue soccer ball careened in out of nowhere and cracked her in the face.

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Well, there you have it! This is really a setup chapter-the rest of the story is going to have a lot more action and interaction betweens characters, but I really wanted to set up Helga's world before diving into all of that. Poor Helga. I have kind of a huge sprawling story outline for this thing, so hopefully it'll go well and people will like it . . .or everyone will hate it and I'll just post it anyway, because why not?! :) Anyway, I have the next chapter written already, so I'll be updating soon. Thanks for reading! And because I thrive on approval and/or acknowledgement, I would love to read your reviews if you'd like to leave them!

xox- FL


	2. Chapter 2

Footsteps running closer.

Panicked voice shouting apologies.

Face. Hurting.

For a second Helga almost thought she'd imagined the whole thing, and then all at once she snapped out of her dreamlike state and reality came rushing at her like, well, like a soccer ball rushing toward her face.

A familiar voice called from across the grassy expanse between the field and her blanket. Helga winced, opened her eyes and immediately squinted. She was wearing sunglasses, but now the blinding light streamed right through them and into her eyes, and the world was a blur of white and green.

"Sorry! I'm so sorry! We were just playing a game over there and—oh."

As her accidental assailant got closer, he realized exactly who he—or rather the ball—had just hit. "Uh, hey Helga." He gave a tentative wave.

Helga looked up, and sure enough she saw Arnold advancing toward her.

Arnold. Of course it was Arnold. Why would it be anyone else but Arnold? And why did he always have to show up right when she'd resolved yet again to be free of him once and for all? It seemed like no matter how hard she tried to just move on with her life like a normal, sane person, the universe kept smacking them right back together. Sometimes more painfully than others.

Helga rubbed her cheek and tried to prepare herself for whatever inevitable disaster was about to happen. She noticed that Arnold was certainly taking his sweet time getting over to her; once he spotted her, he'd stopped running full tilt instead and started to proceed with the determined caution of someone on one of those "world's most dangerous animals" shows where they catch and examine particularly aggressive crocodiles. _Here we go_, she thought.

"I think you dropped something, football head!" she shouted. When he was finally close enough, she hurled the ball back in his general direction with as much force as she could muster, given the fact that she was now on her second injury of the day.

She hoped he'd have to go chasing after the ball, preferably in the opposite direction, but of course he caught it and kept on walking toward her in those beat up old jeans that always hung just-so.

"Oh so _now _you can catch?" She tried to ignore the familiar feeling creeping up in her chest.

"What?"

"OH, SO _NOW_—Ow! It hurts to yell!"

Arnold snickered in spite of himself at her last comment as he approached the edge of her blanket. Helga glared up at him with as much indignation as she could manage.

"Oh yeah, this is hilarious, Arnoldo! It's a real hoot! You probably broke my nose and now I'm going to start senior year with a black eye. That'll look great on picture day! Ha-stinkin-ha."

She stood up and brushed herself off as best she could, and forced herself to look him in the eye. Her red heart-shaped sunglasses had huge cracks in both lenses, and her pink lip gloss had not only smeared all across her cheek but now also had little bits of grass and dirt stuck in it.

Arnold's face softened, and he set the ball on the ground.

"I'm really, really sorry Helga. Here, let me see."

He gingerly lifted up her sunglasses and moved closer, carefully examining her face for signs of injury. He leaned in so closely that she could smell his shampoo.

Time dragged by. Had it been seconds? Minutes? Days? She could feel his breath on her cheeks, and her stomach knotted up so tightly she was sure she was about to explode. Or implode. Or both at the same time, and if that didn't kill her then she would die from not breathing because, she realized, somewhere along the way she had stopped. Breathing. Sweat rolled down the backs of her legs and she suddenly realized just how hot it was outside.

He was going on about how Lila's friend Evie was really bad at soccer and had terrible aim, and before anyone could grab the ball, blah blah blah—the sounds of the park, Arnold, her resolve to not let this exact thing happen to her yet again—it all melted down into a haze as she stared out blankly over his shoulder and her eyes settled on a squirrel intently sniffing through the grass.

"Does this hurt?" Arnold grazed his fingertips lightly over the top of her left cheekbone, where she'd taken the brunt of the impact. Electricity shot through her body. She tried to say something coherent, but all she managed was—

"Squirrel."

The rational part of her brain screamed at her to snap out of it.

The squirrel stood up at that exact moment and looked directly at her. _Are you mocking me, you furry little pest? You are, aren't you? Yeah, well you try living like this and see how well you do. Oh criminy, I'm talking to a squirrel! In my mind! Get a hold of yourself Helga!_

"Helga? Helga! Are you okay?" Arnold looked concerned. Uh oh, how long had he been trying to get her attention? She blinked and shook her head.

"Uh, nothing? I mean what? I mean, I'm fine!" God it was like standing this close to him was scrambling all her brainwaves and turning her into a babbling idiot. "I'm just seeing things! Whooo! I must be woozy from this heat and the sun and, you know, being beaned in the face." _Great. Nice recovery, you moron._

Arnold ignored her outburst and just kept examining her.

"You're not bleeding, but it's really red." He sounded like he felt terrible about the whole thing. _Good. _"I think it's going to be okay."

He'd taken his hand away from her face now and was standing there, clearly expecting some kind of response. She stood there not saying anything for what felt like hours but was in reality about three seconds, and then out of sheer instinct she snatched her sunglasses back from him and heard herself saying words.

"Thanks for your diagnosis _doctor_. I'm sure I'll be fine. And if I'm not, well, I'll just have the hospital bill you for my extensive reconstructive surgery. Maybe I'll even throw in a new nose on your dime. Anyway, if you're done trying to kill me, I need to get back to reading about 'the worst of times.'"

"And the best of times," Arnold said with a smile.

"Yeah," she drawled flatly as she wiped the dirt and lip gloss from her face with the back of her recently-sliced hand, 'the best of times.'"

Helga retrieved her now dirt-smudged copy of "A Tale of Two Cities" from the ground and plopped back down onto her blanket. She dusted the book off and looked down at a random page, if only to have somewhere to focus her eyes besides Arnold. He just kept standing there.

"So, um, do you think you're okay?" He shifted nervously. "How do you feel?"

"Oh I don't know, significantly more like I've just been hit in the face by a large flying object than I did two minutes ago?" Then she added as sincerely as she could manage, "I'll be fine. Nothing a block of ice and a pound of concealer won't cure." It's not that she wanted to be nasty to him—in fact she hated it—but she felt like her acerbic edge was the only thing that kept her from throwing her arms around his neck and kissing him against her will at any given moment.

"I really am sorry Helga. Why don't I get you some ice from the Jolly Olly man?"

_Ugh, stupid stupid stupid! Why did I have to mention ice! _

His offer wasn't a request and she knew it, but she hoped if she protested, by some miracle he'd forget his do-goody nature and just go away. Maybe she could still bounce back from this unfortunate little encounter and wipe all thoughts of him from her memory again before school started. She could do a few of those stupid yoga chants or whatever the heck it was Miriam was always yammering on about.

"Arnold it's fine I—"

"I insist."

_Of course he insists._

"And I'm sorry about those." He motioned to her broken glasses, which were now sitting on the ground next to her. So much for getting him to go away.

"These things? They're just some stupid sunglasses I found in Olga's junk drawer. I left mine on the bus last week. Again. And I didn't want to burn my retinas out lying here in the hot sun so I grabbed these old things."

"Well I think they look nice. Uh, _looked_ nice. They remind me of Lolita."

"What?" Helga felt her cheeks heat up.

"You know, that girl from the movie who—"

"I know who Lolita is, Arnold. That's just . . . weird." Her stomach knotted up again and her mind raced with unwelcome thoughts. She felt like she was teetering on the edge of either hurling her book at his head or pulling him down into the grass with her.

Arnold ran a hand through his hair and looked at the ground.

"I didn't mean it like that Helga."

"You didn't mean I look like teenage man-bait? Then what _did_ you mean, football head?" She suddenly felt extremely conscious of the way Olga's lace dress gapped in front on her, because she didn't have the same annoyingly perfect hourglass shape her sister did.

"Never mind. I'll go get your ice."

Helga knew the change in his tone all too well. At least it meant he was finally leaving.

"No rush. I'll just be sitting here reading and developing a giant bruise on my face!"

Arnold sighed and looked at her for a moment before turning to wander off toward the Jolly Olly truck. This always seemed to be the way conversations between the two of them went.

She watched him go for a few seconds and then laid back down with her book. She wanted to tell him again to forget about the ice but she knew he wouldn't, no matter how ornery she tried to seem, so she just gave in.

Just as he was almost out of earshot, she couldn't help but call out to him again.

"By the way, it was a book first!"

"What?" Arnold stopped and turned back toward her, shielding his eyes from the sun.

"Lolita! It was a book!"

Arnold turned back around and kept walking until she couldn't see him any more.

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So I'm thinking I might make the chapters longer going forward … I feel like 1 & 2 could have been put together. Anyway, thanks to everyone who reviewed and followed the story so far! I like hearing from people, so leave a review or drop me a note if you feel so inclined (even if you hate the story...haha). Even though it took me a long time to put these chapters together, I feel like I'm still finding the tone & voice of the story—does that ever happen to anyone else? You know exactly how you want it to come across, but it takes a while to get the words on the page to match up with what's in your head?

Anyway, I'm probably going to post another more light-hearted story soon, so keep an eye out for that (I'll still be updating this one regularly).

Thanks for reading!

Xox- FL


	3. Chapter 3

The early morning sun streamed in through the skylight over Arnold's bed, dappling his room in patches of light and shadow. He blinked his eyes open and shifted under his sheets. He'd been tossing and turning for the past two hours, but he kept pulling the covers over his head in hopes that he might just sleep the whole day away.

He yawned and reached up to grab his phone from the bookshelf behind his bed; he'd been checking it roughly every twenty minutes since he first woke up, although he wasn't sure what he was checking for—it's not like anyone would be texting him at 7AM, and especially not on a Sunday.

His old conversations glowed up at him in bright yellow and blue. There was Gerald, going on about whether a skinny tie or a cravat (whatever _that _was) would be more appropriate for the first day of school. Arnold, of course, had no idea—it's not that he didn't care what he looked like, but at this point his best friend probably knew more about style than most of the girls in their school, so he was at a loss for even marginally constructive feedback whenever Gerald brought up anything about clothes.

_You lost me at 'bespoke suiting,'_ he'd responded, and imagined his best friend coasting in tomorrow morning looking like he fell out of one of those blogs he was always pulling up, with pictures of impossibly cool guys from Reykjavik wearing weird sweaters and red pants.

And then of course there was the message he'd sent Helga after their little incident in the park.

Helga. He groaned and buried his face in his pillow. He'd barely seen her all summer, and yet within the span of five minutes, everything was back to the way it always was.

Arnold replayed the scene over in his mind, trying to figure out exactly what he could have done differently, but the truth was that—as always—he had no idea.

He didn't even know any more if he was annoyed at her or himself or the fact that he was still thinking about it three days later, or just at the reality that somehow despite his best efforts, it seemed like things always deteriorated between them practically before he was even done saying hello.

He wasn't even sure why it bothered him so much—maybe it was just the fact that he'd made it through his entire school career being that one guy who could talk to anyone—geeks, populars, jocks, drama weirdos, whoever. Anyone except Helga Pataki.

_Well, I guess it didn't help that I hit her in the face with a soccer ball. _

Well, technically _he_ hadn't actually hit her in the face, but that hardly mattered.

He scrolled down to their brief conversation. On Friday morning he'd checked in on her to see how she was doing, and on Saturday at 6:37PM she'd responded:

_Don't worry, I'm still alive._

That was it. He'd followed up by asking her if she thought she'd be okay for picture day, but she hadn't answered.

Maybe if he'd just gone over to say hello? Invited her to come play soccer with them, like he'd considered when he first saw her wander into the park and set up camp under that tree?

But of course that most likely would have gone awry as well.

_Hey Helga, I like your dress._

_Hey! I saw you over here and thought I'd . . ._

_So, ready for school to start?_

_Hi._

As he ran through all the things he might've said, he remembered why he hadn't gone up to her in the first place: after fourteen years, the one thing he knew for sure when it came to Helga Pataki was that no matter what he said, it was always the wrong thing.

_Why am I even worrying about this?_

Before even he finished his thought, however, he already knew the answer was that worrying about his infinite squabbles with Helga was exponentially better than letting his mind crack open the Pandora's box he swore he'd never let himself touch again.

His eyes wandered down to the message he'd read more times than he cared to admit.

_It was so nice to see you! I've really missed you! Let's catch up soon._

He sighed. Maybe going to the park had been a mistake all around.

Before his mind could wander any further down that familiar old path, he tossed his phone to the side and forced himself to sit up and plant his feet on his bedroom floor. The distinct smell of raspberry pancakes and bacon had wafted up to his room, and he wasn't about to let the boarders polish everything off before he made it downstairs.

He threw on his robe and plodded down to the kitchen, where his grandfather sat happily eating a plate of bacon on the edge of a table that was otherwise covered in a clutter of office supplies, from Elmer's glue and crayons to packages of resume paper.

Even though Arnold had grown up in a house filled with "strange," somehow things like this still never failed to surprise him. He grabbed a plate, loaded it up with a few pancakes and sat down, shoving aside a binder with a cartoon train on the front of it to make room for his plate.

"Morning, Shortman!" Phil just kept eating, as if using a coloring book as a place mat was a completely normal thing to do. Arnold furrowed his brow.

"Grandpa, what is all this stuff?" He picked up a little package of flower-shaped post-it notes.

"Well, I just thought you might be needing some supplies for school!" Phil said, as if the answer were plain as day.

Arnold eyed his grandfather and grabbed one of the more confusing objects from the array.

"A staple gun? Grandpa, I'm pretty sure I don't need this."

"You never know Arnold, you _never know_."

Arnold rolled his eyes.

"Come on grandpa! A label maker? A box of 48 yellow highlighters? _Kitten_ stickers? You know I don't need any of this stuff."

"Really? I thought for sure you'd love the stickers. Oh those adorable little cats, they'll look so cute—"

"_Grandpa—"_

"Well, if you don't need any of it I guess you'll just have to go return it all and pick up the things you want! Of course I'd do it for you, but I'm an old man Arnold!"

Arnold knew his grandfather was up to something, he just wasn't sure what it was.

"All of that driving and shopping and lifting, the old ticker might explode any minute! Of course none of this was a brilliantly calculated scheme to get you to stop moping around and get out the door—that would be manipulative and sneaky and—oh alright Arnold, you got me! It was all a scheme to get you to stop moping around and get out the door!"

"You don't say." Arnold looked at his grandfather through narrowed eyes.

"I do say!" Phil moved his chair closer to Arnold's. "Don't think I haven't noticed the way you've been dragging around here all weekend, sighing and looking tortured the way you teenagers do."

Arnold rested his chin in his hands.

"I haven't been 'moping' grandpa." He hadn't. Had he?

"Oh come on Arnold, you can't fool me. Every time I turn around, there you are, sighing and slumping over like someone in one of those depressing music videos you kids love to watch."

"Are you trying to call me 'emo' grandpa?"

"Yes! What's an emo?"

Arnold laughed and sat up straight in his chair. As ridiculous as all of this was, maybe Phil had a point after all. When he thought about it, he hadn't even left the boarding house since Thursday night when he'd gone to the store for some milk and cereal.

"Maybe you're right grandpa. I don't know. I'm usually pretty excited for school to start, but lately I just feel like . . . well, I don't even know what I feel."

"It's normal Arnold! It's your last year of high school. Soon you'll be an adult and then you'll have to face the crushing responsibilities of finding a job and supporting a family of seven on a coal miner's salary! I don't blame you for wanting to sleep all day, Shortman."

"Thanks a lot," Arnold said sarcastically.

Phil winked at his grandson and offered him a second serving of bacon.

"Whad'ya say we finish up breakfast and then return all this junk to the store? Except the kitten stickers. I'm keeping those."

"Sounds good grandpa." Arnold smiled to himself as he finished up his pancakes. Even though his grandparents had never been what he'd consider "normal," somehow in their own strange and roundabout way they always seemed to know how to cheer him up.

After breakfast, Arnold and his grandfather returned the pile of supplies to a very confused cashier, and then they both bought new shoes and stopped off at the supermarket to do the week's grocery shopping before returning to the boarding house.

It turned out that as usual, Phil was right. Just getting up and out the door was enough to make Arnold realize what a rut he'd been in for the past few days. Whatever it was, it seemed that an afternoon with his grandfather had helped him shake it off. After he unloaded the shopping bags from the car and restocked the pantry, he wandered up to his room with a renewed sense of excitement for the new year.

Arnold stretched out on his bed, wondering what the first day of school would bring. He yawned. He was starting to feel the effects of waking up at 5AM, and he decided to pop in a movie and relax for a few hours before getting everything together for the morning.

_He leaned against the pool table._

"_I got it from that record store downtown. The one by—"_

_He stopped mid-sentence. When he felt her hand on his shoulder, he realized why his best friend's expression had changed so suddenly._

"_Can I talk to you?" she whispered. She was close enough that he could hear her over the music pumping through the house and the excited roar of everyone flirting, talking and singing all around them._

"_Of course," he said as nonchalantly as he could manage. A dizzying mixture of curiosity, panic and unbridled hope shot through him. Gerald raised an eyebrow. _

"_Catch you later man?"_

_He nodded._

_She grabbed his hand. _

_She was leading him upstairs, outside, away from the party. The muffled sound of the music thumping from behind glass doors echoed the thumping in his chest as he wondered if this was it—the moment he was sure was never actually going to happen—unfolding in front of him here on Rhonda Lloyd's balcony._

"_Gosh, can you believe we graduated?" she said, hovering closer to him than he could ever remember her doing before. "It seems like just yesterday we were in fourth grade." She laughed._

_She had to know how perfect she was. She had to. Standing there in the moonlight with her hair done up in soft red curls, her skin perfect and pale, her eyes lighting his heart on fire like they always did. _

"_Yeah, it's pretty crazy." He tried to keep his cool, even though he was sure his nervous energy was radiating from every pore in his body._

_And then before he had time to wonder what he should say next, she was kissing him. In that moment, fantasies of them holding hands, sitting together in school assemblies and laughing as their friends taunted them for sneaking off behind the bleachers during gym class flooded his mind the way they so often did, except now, finally, they were actually within reach. And then she was backing away._

"_Arnold, I'm moving."_

_All of the wonderful things he'd felt just a second ago were sucked out, and replaced by—nothing. A void. Whatever you call the moment just before the terrible thing happens, when that tiny part of your brain is still clinging to the hope that what's about to happen isn't actually about to happen. _

"_You're moving? When?"_

_He struggled to make sense of what exactly was going on._

"_Quite soon, actually." She looked at the ground and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "We're leaving in three days." _

_She said something about her father's job and it all being very new and sudden and wasn't it crazy how things could change just like that. She was in the middle of a sentence when he blurted out—_

"_Why did you kiss me?"_

_She hesitated for the briefest of moments, and then she smiled that perfect, intoxicating, innocent smile of hers that would haunt him for the better part of the next year and said simply "I suppose I've just always wanted to know what it would be like."_

_And she and took his hand and told him she hoped they wouldn't lose touch, and she reached up once more and kissed him on the cheek before she disappeared back into the house to say her goodbyes._

_And before he could go after her, he was falling. Falling from somewhere he couldn't see and there was no ground below him and then there were sharp rocks and then nothing and suddenly Bruce Willis was shouting at him._

Arnold woke up with a knot in his stomach.

He glanced at the time. 6:12PM. "Die Hard" was still playing on his computer.

He'd only been asleep for about forty minutes, but it felt like he'd been out for three days.

He stared up at the ceiling as John McClane yelled and shot at things.

So Lila was back after three years, when he thought he'd never have to see her again. So much had changed since then. _He'd _changed since then. And hanging out in the park had been fine. It really had. There was no reason why everything couldn't be fine tomorrow, and the day after that and the day after that.

And then, before he could think about it any further, he went downstairs to see if his grandfather needed help with dinner.

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Originally this chapter was going to be Helga and Phoebe hanging out and debriefing after the incident in the park (which I'll probably still write), and then someone (Nep2uune) left a review that said "I think Arnold did that on purpose. So he would have a reason to come over there." And while I knew that that wasn't the exact direction I was going right now, it made me stop and think a lot about what exactly was running through Arnold's mind, and actually helped me fill in some back story to this larger arc that I hope I'll be able to create as the story moves forward (the events of the dream came about as a result of thinking about all of this—that wasn't even an idea before I started thinking about Arnold's state of mind more).

Helga has such a rich emotional life that it's really easy to just write everything from her perspective and gloss over whatever's going on with Arnold. I think he's got a deep well of emotion too, but to me he seems like he's a lot less in touch with his emotions than Helga is. At least that's my take. It was fun kind of putting them through this similar struggle thinking about their respective pasts and seeing how they both process things differently, especially since it fits in perfectly with the larger story I already knew I wanted to tell. This chapter was actually really hard to write (I must have started it six different ways!), but I'm really glad I didn't miss out on delving into Arnold's thought process more.

So I guess what I'm saying is, please review the story! Haha :) Seriously though, I do love hearing from people, or even seeing that people are following the story (which hopefully means you're enjoying it!).

I know I said I might start writing longer chapters, but this is my first time getting back to writing in quite a while and I'd forgotten how _hard_ it can be. I feel like filling in 80% of the story is fun and wonderful, and then nailing down that last 20% and figuring out exactly how to make it all come together can be torture. So … I probably _won't_ be writing longer chapters, in the interest of actually being able to update this regularly vs feeling totally overwhelmed and disappearing for a month. Wheee!

Oh, and finally-am I the only one who can totally see Gerald turning into a hipster? He's always been so cool, and I find it really amusing to imagine him growing up and always looking completely sharp in narrow pants & button-downs.

Till next time!

xox- FL

(oh PS, if anyone's wondering about the cover image I finally added, it's from Edward Hopper's "Morning Sun.")


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